Bradley A. Fiske

“ Does not a nation give up fighting just as soon as it sees that further fighting would do more harm than good? A general or an admiral, in charge of a detached force, must fight sometimes even at tremendous loss and after all hope of local success has fled, in order to hold a position, the long holding of which is essential to the success of the whole strategic plan; but what country keeps up a war until its people are about to starve? Did Spain do so in our last war? Did Russia fear that Japan would force the people of her vast territory into starvation? ”

“ The most obvious thing about a navy is its material: the ponderous battleships, the picturesque destroyers, the submarines, the intricate engines of multifarious types, the radio, the signal-flags, the torpedo that costs $8,000, the gun that can sink a ship 10 miles away.
The United States navy ever since its beginning in 1775 has excelled in its material; the ships have always been good, and in many cases they have surpassed those of similar kind in other navies. This has been due to the strong common sense of the American people, their engineering skill, and their inventive genius. ”

“ Is not the superior civilization of the present day a mechanical civilization pure and simple? And has not the invention of electrical and mechanical appliances, with the resulting insuring of communication and transportation, and the improvements in instruments of destruction, advantaged the great nations more than the weaker ones, and increased the temptation to great nations to use force rather than decreased it? Do not civilization's improvements in weapons of destruction augment the effectiveness of warlike methods, as compared with the peaceful methods of argument and persuasion? ”

“ For even a successful defense of a coast against invasion by a hostile force cannot remove the inimical influence to a country's commerce and welfare which that hostile force exerts, any more than palliatives can cure dyspepsia. Every intelligent physician knows that the only way to cure a disease is to remove its cause; and every intelligent military or naval man knows that history teaches that the only way in which a country can defend itself successfully against an enemy is to defeat the armed force of that enemy—be it a force of soldiers on the land, or a force of war-ships on the sea. ”

“ The chief engineer of any electric plant, of any municipal water-works, of any railroad, of any steamship must have the most profound and intimate knowledge of the details of construction and the method of operation of the machine committed to his charge. Recognition of this fact by the engineering profession is so complete and perfect as to be almost unconscious; and no man whose reasoning faculties had been trained by the exact methods of engineering could forget it for a moment. ”

“ It is only the spirit of life that makes a man alive, and permits the members of his body, like the members of a ship, to perform their appointed tasks.
But even if this notion seems fanciful and absurd, we must admit that as surely as the mind and brain and nerves and the material elements of a man must be designed and made to work in harmony together, so surely must all the parts of any ship, and all the parts of any navy, parts of material and parts of personnel, be designed and made to work in harmony together ”

“ Surprise has sometimes been expressed at the quickness with which the Japanese defeated the Russians at Tsushima; but would any one express surprise if a pugilist, fresh from rest, quickly defeated another pugilist who, exhausted from long travelling, staggered hopelessly into the ring? And how would the betting be before a football match, if it were known that one of the teams would enjoy a rest of twenty-four hours before the game, whereas the other team would walk from the railroad to the ball grounds after a trip across the continent? ”

“ The real reason for Great Britain's having a powerful navy applies with exact equality to the United States. Now that Great Britain has proved how great a navy is best for her, we can see at once how great a navy is best for us. That is—since Great Britain and the United States are the wealthiest countries in the world, and since the probability of war between any two countries is least when their navies are equal in power—the maximum good would be attained by making the United States navy exactly equal to the British navy. ”

“ The whole structure of that noble science rests on facts that have been demonstrated to be facts, and the art rests on actions springing from those facts; and neither the science nor the art would now exist, if machines created by engineering skill had been committed to the charge of men unskilled.
It is obvious that the more complicated in construction any machine is, the more time and study are needed to understand it fully; and that the more complicated its method of operation is, the more practice is needed in order to attain skill in operating it. ”

“ In what does naval power consist and what are its principal characteristics?
If one looks at a fleet of war-ships on the sea, he will be impressed consciously or unconsciously with the idea of power. If he is impressed consciously, he will see that the fleet represents power in the broadest sense—power active and power passive; power to do and power to endure; power to exert force and power to resist it. ”

“ How can it have a sheet of water, just deep enough but not too deep to anchor a large fleet in, with all of its auxiliaries extensive enough to accommodate all the vessels and far enough from the sea to be safe from gun-fire, and yet be on an island so small and so rugged, that an enemy could not land troops near the base and capture it from the land side, as the Japanese captured Port Arthur? The natural strategic advantages of a large and sheltered sheet of water seem to entail the disadvantages of a large island, or a continent. ”

“ And what is "power," in the sense in which officials, both military and civilian, use the word? Is it ability to do good service, or is it ability to bestow favors in order that favors may be received, to give orders to others coupled with authority to enforce obedience, or to take revenge for injuries received or fancied? Of course, "power" is ability to do all these things, good and bad. But if a man desires power simply to do good service, and if he holds a highly conscientious view of the accompanying duties and responsibilities, will he crave "power" as much as some men seem to do? ”

“ Now the inventor and engineer type do not exist only in the world of engineering and mechanics, though it is in that world that they are the most clearly recognized; for they exist in all walks of life. In literature, inventors write novels; in business life, they project railroads; in strategy, they map out new lines of effort. In literature, the engineer writes cyclopædias; in business, he makes the projected railroads a success; in strategy, he works out logistics and does the quantitative work. ”

“ But when a maritime country is not contented to live within its own borders, then a navy becomes essential to guard its people and their possessions on the highways of the sea; to enforce, not municipal or national law, as an army does, but international law.
Now the desire of the people of a country to extend their trade beyond the seas seems in some ways not always a conscious desire, not a deliberate intent, but to be an effort of self-protection, or largely an effort of expansion; for getting room or employment. As the people of a country become civilized, labor-saving devices multiply ”

“ This fact indicates what a thousand other facts of history also indicate, that civilization and the peaceful arts contribute to the longevity of nations—not only by promoting personal comfort, and by removing causes of internal strife, and thus enabling large bodies of people to dwell together happily, but also by increasing their military power. Every nation which has achieved greatness has cultivated assiduously both the arts of peace and the arts of war. Every nation which has long maintained that greatness has done so by maintaining the policy by which she acquired it. ”

“ So the studies and problems instituted by Von Moltke, and copied in all the armies and navies of the world, have brought about a science of strategy which is real, even though not exact, and which dwells in the mind of each trained strategist, as the high tribunal to which all his questions are referred and by whose decisions he is guided; just as the principles of medicine are the guide alike of the humblest and the most illustrious practitioner, wherever the beneficent art of medicine is practised. ”

“ Our personnel, too, has always been good. The American seaman has always excelled, and so has the American gunner. No ships have ever been better handled than the American ships; no naval battles in history have been conducted with more skill and daring than those of American ships; no exploits in history surpass those of Cushing, Hobson, and Decatur.
In operations, however, in the handling of the navy as a whole, we have never excelled; though no better individual fleet leaders shine in the pages of all history than Farragut and Dewey. ”

“ This idea has been exploited by people opposed to the development of the army and navy, and has been received with so much credulity that it seriously handicaps the endeavors of officers to get an unbiassed hearing. But surely the foolishness of such an idea would promptly disappear from the brain of any one if he would remind himself that simply because a man joins the army or navy he does not cease to be a human being, with the same emotions of fear as other men, the same sensitiveness to pain, the same dread of death, and the same horror of leaving his family unsupported after his death. ”

“ A navy is so evidently a machine that the expression "naval machine" has often been applied to it. It is a machine that, both in peace and in war, must be handled by one man, no matter how many assistants he may have. If a machine cannot be made to obey the will of one man, it is not one machine. If two men are needed, at least two machines are to be operated; if three men are needed there are at least three machines, etc. One fleet is handled by one man, called the commander-in-chief. ”

“ Even if the civilization of a given nation may have been brought about in some degree by forces external to that nation, yet it is clear that we must regard that civilization rather as the result of those forces than as a force itself. Besides, civilization has never yet made the relations of nations with each other more unselfish, civilized nations now and in the past, despite their veneer of courtesy, being fully as jealous of each other as the most savage tribes. ”

“ It seems to be a fact that we cannot get something for nothing: that every plus has its minus, every joy its pain; that if men succeed in passing beyond the savage state, and in overcoming the forces of nature, so that they can live in houses with every modern luxury and convenience, they must pay for it by a condition of competition that causes personal jealousies among individuals, commercial wars among organizations, physical wars among nations.
Yet the instinctive desire of every one is for peace and comfort, for the maximum of good with the minimum of exertion ”

“ No, on the contrary; war is recognized as the most potent method still; the prominence of military matters is greater than ever before; at no time in the past has interest in war been so keen as at the present, or the expenditure of blood and money been so prodigal; at no time before has war so thoroughly engaged the intellect and energy of mankind.
In other words, the trend of the nations has been toward a clearer recognition of the efficacy of military power, and an increasing use of the instrumentality of war. ”

“ But if it were not for patriotism there would be no competition among nations; and in any one nation there would be no national spirit, no endeavor on the part of every man to do his part toward making her strong, efficient, and of good repute or toward making the people individually prosperous and happy. In the same way, on a smaller scale, many people deplore the necessity of competition among organizations, saying that it is ruthless and selfish; that it stamps out the individual; that it makes every man a mere cog in a money-getting machine ”

“ Strategy is not a science only; it is an art as well; and although the art cannot be practised in its perfection until after the science is well comprehended, yet the art of strategy was born before the science was. This is true of all those departments of man's activity that are divided into sciences and arts, such as music, surgery, government, navigation, gunnery, painting, sculpture, and the rest; because the fundamental facts—say of music—cannot even attract attention until some music has been produced by the art of some musician, crude though that art may be ”

“ A soldier's musket, for instance, is a very perfect tool—very accurate, very powerful, very rapid; and no marksman in the world is so skilful that he can shoot the musket with all the accuracy and speed of which the gun itself is capable.
This indicates that the personnel of a navy is harder to handle than the material, and that therefore the most effort is required to be expended on the personnel. The strength of any system depends on the strength of its weakest part; in any organism, human or material, effort is best expended on the weak points rather than on the strong. ”

“ A battleship is an instrument requiring skill to handle well, considered both as a mechanism and as an organization. Its effective handling calls for skill not only on the part of the captain, but on the part of all hands. The finest dreadnaught is ineffective if manned by an ineffective crew. The number and complexity of the mechanisms on board are so great as to stagger the imagination ”

“ It would be tiresome to recount all the battles both on sea and land, in which smaller forces defeated forces numerically greater; but it may not be possible by any other means to force the fact on the attention—even sometimes of naval officers—that material vessels, guns, etc., are merely instruments, and that the work gotten out of any instrument depends not only on the instrument itself, but on the skill with which it is employed. Usually, when thinking or speaking of the power of any instrument (or means or method or organization) we mean the power of which it is capable ”

“ But if the proper plans have not been made and executed, the sudden outbreak of war, in which any country becomes involved with a powerful naval country, will create confusion on a scale larger than any that the world has ever seen, and compared with which pandemonium would be a Quaker meeting. A realization of facts will come to that country, and especially to the naval authorities, that will overwhelm them with the consciousness of their inability to meet the crisis marching toward them with swift but unhurried tread—confident, determined, unescapable. ”

“ The ease and certainty with which orders can be transmitted and received, the precision with which large forces can be quickly despatched from place to place, and the tremendous power exertable by those forces, tend to blind the mind to the fact that transferring any force to any place is merely making a "move," and that the other player can make moves, too. If a man were never to be pitted in strategy against another player, either in games or in actual war, the "infinite variety" of strategy would never be disclosed to his intelligence ”

“ As naval policy and naval strategy are so intimately connected in their essence, it is apparent that the naval policy of a country and its naval strategy should be intimately connected in fact; for the policy cannot be properly carried out if the strategy that tries to execute it is not good, or if the policy requires more naval force or skill than the navy can bring to bear; and the strategy cannot be good if it is called upon to execute a policy impossible to execute, or if the exact end in view of the policy is not distinctly known. ”